So did Apple screw up? Should users be worried about LBS?

The answer lies some where in between a YES and NO. Bear with us for a second. Before we explain what happened with Apple we need to get into how location can be detected on a device – be it a phone or a computer. There are 3 ways in which this can be done:

1. Using GPS – as in satellites. Most smart phones these days are shipped with these chips. Device has to get a lock on the satellite(s) for it to get the exact location. This usually takes time sometimes upto a minute. Depends on the quality of the device & where you are. In some of the lower end Android phones the quality of the chips isn’t great and hence takes even more time. GPS is freely available thanks to the US satellite system. GPS -> HIGHER ACCURACY (Few feet to meters), LONGER TIME
2. Using Cell Towers – Many companies maintain a database of cell towers (ids) and their GPS co-ordinates. This information is mostly available to the mobile operators & few other companies. When your cell phone connects to the cell phone towers, it knows the IDs. Using these IDs and the GPS co-ordinates of the cell towers it is possible to triangulate your approximate location. This is generally faster if you have the cell IDs & co-ordinates of the cell towers. Cell tower information: Mobile service providers & others like Skyhook. Cell Towers -> MEDIUM ACCURACY, MEDIUM TIME
3. Using Wifi Access Points / IP address – Based on your IP address from which the request originates, the location can be coarsely figured out. Google database is by far the most comprehensive as far as we know – tracking you down to the locality. Wifi / IP Address: LOWER ACCURACY, MEDIUM TIME

For any location based service to work – the service provider will need the location from the user. The accuracy will depend on the services being provided. As the provider of the operating system on these mobile devices, it is important for companies like Apple, Google & Microsoft to have good databases. Google even tried to buy Skyhook. The most common technique is to crowd source this data – aka cell phone towers ids & IP addresses. Moreover to optimize the response time when using GPS the operating system returns the last location that it had cached.

Google & Apple have different ways of communicating this to the user. In the case of Google, they ask you for your explicit permission when you choose the option use Wifi to locate. They also store your location data as in lat/longs for a limited period and is encrypted.

However Apple didn’t explicitly ask for such permission to save this data. Although Apple only stores approximate cell tower lat/longs – it also stores this data in an unencrypted format for a longer period. This has been confirmed to be a bug. In both cases of Google & Apple – neither of them have used this data to profile or provide this data to unauthorized folks including advertisers. (TOM TOM did so in breach of user trust but that’s a separate matter)

In Apple’s case given that the user is paying for data transfer for crowd sourcing, they should have sought explicit permission. No user wants to be paying for crowd sourcing a vendor’s data without explicit permissions.

Lets also look at the unencrypted file issue. Till this bug was discovered there was no way for anyone without the computer on which iPhone was synced to access the file. The program that was released reads the file from the backup. To say that this file was available to anyone who has access to the phone is BALONY!

Apple’s only mistake was not getting explicit permission from the end user for crowd sourcing cell id data on the end users dime.

Now lets look at this issue from an application perspective:

When you download any app from the app store/marketplace – you as a user are explicitly asked to authorize the list of permissions you are giving the app. Mostly users say yes without reading the details.

This is where Apple & Google are different.

On Android as long as the application provider asks for permission & the end users agree – the application has the authority to do anything with that data. Application provider can genuinely make a mistake (one line of code). We made a similar mistake before an end user notified us (This has been addressed a while back). But there are other applications that use your data without reason (more later).

Apple has taken the right approach on location permissions. The application provider has to explicitly state why location is needed by the application and has stated clearly that applications cannot use location for the sole purpose of advertising! Moreover at any time, the user can go into the settings window and look at applications that currently have permission to read location data and which apps are utilizing it.

In the Indian marketplace on Android, applications explicitly use the location data for the sole purpose of advertising and get away with it. We aren’t taking names at this point but are happy to do so if you ask in private.

If you are still reading, thanks for your patience!

In the next post we will put out our privacy policy so you as an end consumer feel safe and secure about using our service.

Mark your calendars.

Date & Time: Jan 22nd, 2011, 10 am

Venue:  Sasken, 139/25, Amarjyoti Layout, Domlur, Bangalore

We look forward to meeting new users & engaging with the mobile community in Bangalore!  If you are a user of the app and are planning to be there, please leave a comment or let us know. We would like to talk to you.

Here are some highlights in the last few weeks:

• Closing in on 1000 downloads
• Rated around 4 in the app store
• Over 20+ comments

We couldn’t have done this without the support of our users who have been patient with the issues & have been enthusiastic in their feedback. So a heartful thank you and a team salute to you all!

We are truly grateful to all our partners who have have supported us,  this is a testament to the relationship.

We have a long way before we go, a new release is just around the corner! Hang in there & help us spread the word!

Like us on Facebook, tweet your friends, get them to download the app – onward bound!

Team Taazza

One of the things that we constantly heard from users during the alpha/beta tests is that they really liked getting local news (Neighborhood news or City news) and good number of them wanted to be able to get it on the mobile. So a couple of months ago we got working on our mobile app. Hyperlocal has been our primary focus since the beginning so we wanted the app to be the goto app for hyperlocal content. Our users demanded more than news & we had built relationships with deal providers.

So without further ado, let us introduce TaazzaGO for Android.

Here are some features of the app that make it stand apart from the crowd:

• News from over 40 cities/100,000 localities in India.
• 100′s of deals from top deals providers in the country – Both offline & online
• Buy deals on the fly
• Share news/deals with friends & family on Facebook & twitter
• News from a variety of news sources including leading publishers, hyperlocal blogs & news papers.

All on the go… No longer can you complain of lack of Indian content on Android.

Go grab the application now .. Search for TaazzaGO on the Android market place or Scan the QR Code below.

Still not convinced? Head to our mobile page for even more exciting reasons &  our partners.

Taazza – in hindi means fresh. Its pronounced (Tha-zz-A). We are Taazza with a ZZing! Remember the coffee mug with fresh aroma & steam.

So we wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge our compatriots(Taza.com, Taaza.com, Tazza.com, Taazzaa.com ….) with similar sounding names out there. Feel free to leave comments if we have missed any more of them. Here is some link love from us ..

This is a staff favorite – Taazza Indian Grill seems to make sumptuous Indian food. We visit the site when we feel hungry! Feel free to ship us some of that delicious parathas fellas.

You can find pratically anything on taaza.com, one of our employees has lost his cat  has been religiously visiting the site looking for his cat! No such luck as yet- we will keep you posted …

Theres even a bollywood flick Aaj Ki Taaza Khabar. Be sure to check it out.

Hope you find these titbit’s as fun as we do. If you are associated with one of these entities, pls take the liberty to say “hello”. Its done in good humor

-Team Taazza (with a ZZing ..)
P.S: All the logos & names are copyrights of respective owners!

After months of hard work and sweat, we shipped our alpha product to select friends & family. It is not fully baked and hence it the alpha tag.  As someone said “Shipping is a feature”. So we have shipped it with minimal features that we would like to iterate on. The results so far have been promising. We wanted to keep you update to let you know that work on the product is going full speed.

To Friends & family who have stood by us during these difficult months, a heart felt “thank you“.

P.S: We are looking for senior associates/team leads to help us take us to the next level.

We at Taazza are looking for Senior Associates to be part of a small but fun team to develop cutting edge software(real time) for news aggregation & delivery. We use ruby extensively here at Taazza (Nanite/AMQP/Sinatra/Hpricot to name a few!)

Your school & degree are not as important as your drive & passion! Here is what we are looking for:

• Have the inclination to LEARN & keep up with new technologies.
• Have a good knowledge of data structures
• Ruby / Java as a programming language

Nice to haves:

• Ruby on Rails
• Based out of Bangalore

If you believe this is you please email us (jobs [at] taazza [dot] com) & we can chat over a drink or a coffee! or call us at 9902842735.

If you know someone who fits the bill then share or forward this information. You WILL be rewarded (handsomely too!)

Things have been pretty busy for us here at Taazza, more people on-board (announcements in a few) and loads of work. But the workhorse that is helping do all the work is Hanuman, the SUN machine(x4150) that has been gracefully given to us by SUN Microsystems.  For those who don’t know Hanuman, he is a character from the Indian Mythology who personifies strength, belief & the will to accomplish things, something we expect from our server

I have pleasant memories of SUN Microsystems, as it was the first UNIX machine that I started my career with. They bring strong R & D experience and support to our organization. I would like to thank Bakshish Dutta of SUN Startup Essentials for making this happen. They have been an invaluable partner and have been helpful in getting us started.

And trust me we are putting Hanuman’s strength to good use Our Hadoop clusters, crawlers are pounding the server pretty good.

The churn has begun.. Interesting times ahead

Looking forward to a great partnership with SUN!

Hanuman took a great ride home from the shipping center (Indian style). I leave you with some pictures of his journey.

Nakul Mudgal

We are thrilled about it! After interacting & reviewing loads of resumes & candidates, we have made our first hire – Nakul. Nakul brings passion, skills & the drive to work on new technologies! We are happy to have him on board. This is a big step for us!

I will let Nakul speak for himself:

Hi!  Nakul here… I’m from delhi , born brought up and schooled, moved to Jaipur  for my engineering in Computer Science and now on my way to Bengaluru to join TAAZZA as an Associate Developer. My computing  strong holds include C/C++, SQL and VB.NET, Ruby, Perl, XML, HTML , data structures and networking. I also enjoy working in DB2 , Adobe flash and photoshop.

At TAAZZA I’m looking forward to working on Ruby, Perl, and well anything that comes my way.

Moving on to my personal domain! the things I enjoy in my freetime are reading quotations, my current favourite being “It’s not enough to be good when you have the ability to be better.” and my all time favourite “When all else fails there’s always beer.”

As for Sports I’m into are cricket , Formula 1 and tennis. Movies that I usually prefer are ones that have nothing to do with reality! Sci-Fi is all I like.

Looking forward to being part of Taazza both as a developer and a user alike!

We continue to look for  associates to be part of our team so if you would like to be part of our growing team write to us at jobs [at] taazza [dot] com. And while you are at it please take the time to review our post on what we are looking in our candidates